Never Alone
by Linneam
Summary: "Promise you won't leave me?" she asked. "James, I meant what I said. I cannot do this alone, and I won't do it without you. If we die, we die together." First war. J/L. One-shot.


**So... I'm writing a series of Lily/James fics and one shots... They all work together, but they're all also separate pieces... And I'm not writing them in chronological order. For example, I wrote "Never Regret," the story of how they get together, and now I'm writing, "Never Alone." There's one that belongs in the middle, but as they're not a definite set, I didn't write it first. I wrote what I felt like writing. **

**Anyway, I say that mainly to say that you should look at the other one and watch for future pieces if you like this one... And I really hope you do! Thanks for reading. :) Please review at the bottom. **

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Lily always kept the house well-lit when she was home alone. It wasn't due to fear or an expectation of protection; a few lamps never stopped a Death Eater. But they could make things seem brighter, and with the ever-growing darkness around her, she figured her world could use a little bit of light.

Of course, when her husband was home, she didn't need the light; it was inside her. With his lips brushing gently against hers and her small, pale hand enveloped in his larger, calloused one - well, her world was full of sparks.

Unfortunately, those sparks were becoming fewer and farther between. The Potters were Order members, and Voldemort's power was only growing with each passing day. Of course they were busy. But while she maintained a comfortable position observing the Ministry, her newly-appointed auror of a husband traveled all over. At first it had only been a weekend... Then a week or two... And then months.

On this particular night, Lily was suffering from a nearly two month separation, and it was only just half over. The house felt more vacant than usual, also, which did nothing to help her cope with his lengthy absence. Rarely did the young wife feel alone, for her fellow Order members kept her life busy when and where her job did not. That night, however, she was the only one home.

The brilliant red-head padded across her kitchen's cool hardwood floor and upon entering the living room scuffed her bare feet against the carpet. Her usually thin body felt slightly pudgier than normal, and her pale skin took on a clammy shine. Filled with fatigue, she settled on her plush couch and drew her knees up to her chest. Through the window, she saw raindrops flying in every direction before finally settling on the ground with a muffled thud. They pounded louder against the roof, and their presence accentuated the gift of light surrounding her home.

Her gaze turned, and she stared, fixated, at the fire. Though she could see its burning colors and knew of its restless energy, its heat avoided her. Lily felt cold, and even the dancing flames could not stir the joy they usually did. Instead, she saw only the memory of her husband standing in the same blaze, then shimmery green, and waving a hurried goodbye. Dumbledore needed him, after all.

"James," the girl murmured quietly, talking to herself. "I don't know if I can last another eight weeks. I miss you, and I need you now. There's so much we need to talk about."

Part of her expected to hear a sarcastic reply- something along the lines of_,_ "Uh-oh. Not the 'we need to talk' speech"_-_ but it never came. Instead, her answer came from the tick of their grandfather clock, the tick of another second passing with him away. Lily hated its sound, for she knew that thousands of those harmless ticks and tocks remained before she saw him again.

She closed her eyes, her head pounding. Of the eight weeks they'd been apart, Lily had spent five fighting a recurring mix of headaches and nausea, yet she'd managed to gain five pounds. At first, she argued it didn't make sense, but when her monthly visitor stopped calling, the answer seemed obvious. She'd taken three Muggle tests, and what seemed obvious then became fact: she was pregnant.

All she wanted was to tell James. It was hard to feel excited and enjoy the miracle of expecting a child when her partner was weaving in and out of her home life, instead mingling with dark wizards and chasing mainly false leads. No, it was much easier to be terrified. Even when dating, the pair discussed having children; they never discussed, however, doing it separately. In their minds, they would be together for everything- the morning sickness, the late night cravings, the name choosing... Everything. But instead, she was alone and nearly a trimester though, and he didn't even know.

"Please let him come home safe," she whispered, trying to disregard a particularly strong wave of nausea. "Just bring him home."

As if on command, she heard a whoosh come from her fireplace. "James?" she whispered, hardly daring to hope as she opened her eyes.

A black-haired man stood in the fireplace, a grim look on his face. But he was not _her _black-haired man. This man's hair was longer and tamer, perfectly accentuating his pale gray eyes. Almost any other girl would have been thrilled to see the "drop dead gorgeous" man of their school days, but in Lily's mind, Sirius Black was no James Potter. As such, she could only try to hide her disappointment at his sudden appearance.

"Hello, Sirius."

With a hurried wave, he began pacing in front of the fireplace and muttering under his breath. Lily caught phrases like, "not supposed to tell," and "how can I not," but overall, his words were a muddled mess.

"Padfoot," she said calmly, using James' preferred name for his old friend, "calm down. What's this all about?"

Her former classmate and dear friend seemed at war with himself for the briefest of seconds, but he chose to spill anyway. "James is in trouble. Dumbledore wanted to wait to tell you until he was already at St. Mungo's, but I thought you deserved to know."

Her stomach dropped, and her strongest wave of nausea yet swept through her, sending her scrambling for the nearest rubbish bin. This time, however, she doubted it was due to her pregnancy. As soon as she surfaced, she coughed out a simple, "What's happened?" and pulled herself to her feet.

"Sit," Sirius said calmly, gently forcing her back down to the couch. "You look awful. Plus, we have to wait for an owl from St. Mungo's before we go flying up there. It's suspicious and all, knowing he's hurt before they do. We can't afford it. I tried; believe me."

Lily shook her head, fighting to stay up. "No, we need to go now. He's hurt or- We need to see him."

More forcefully, Sirius pushed her down to the couch, this time joining her. "We can't. Give it half an hour, please. They'll contact you first. Then we can all go."

"But he's- If something happens-" Lily tried to argue, a mixture of anger and worry coursing through her. This could not be happening. James was fine. He could not be hurt, and she could not lose him. Not when their baby was seven months from knowing this world. But she also knew Sirius was right. They couldn't know before the doctors. With that fact, however, how did Sirius know? "How did you find out?"

"The mirrors. Remember that piece of mirror you used to tease James about? Calling him vain and the rest? Well, as much as he does _love_ his appearance, the bloody things are rubbish for seeing how you look. They're communication devices. We nicked 'em off Filch second year. All you have to do is talk into it, and the person with the other mirror can hear you."

In an attempt to suppress the growing fear in her bosom, Lily channeled every bit of anger she could find. "You mean to tell me he's been able to be in touch with everyone all this time, and he's done _nothing_ to tell me if he's ok. We can't have an owl there, I get it, but he can talk to you through a mirror?"

Sirius frowned, tugging at the collar of his dark gray robes. Though his eyes were clouded with worry, he managed to stay calm in his response. "It was for emergencies. I asked him to take it just in case. Without it, we might not have found him. Don't be mad."

With a sigh, Lily nodded. "I'm not- Well, I am, but I can't help it. It's just- I'm scared. I can't lose him."

Her companion mirrored her nod, and they fell into a tense silence. Where was he? Was he hurt? Cursed? D- No, that thought was not even allowed. James Potter was not dead.

After nearly an hour of tense silence in which she cried and Sirius awkwardly alternated between hugging her and patting her shoulder, the owl arrived, and the pair apparated together in front of a grungy department store. The windows were streaked with dirt, and below the chipped white lettering of, "Purge and Dowse, Ltd.," hung a sign reading, "Condemned."

Together, the friends walked toward the window, and they almost immediately found themselves in a stark, bustling hospital filled with complaining, dark-robed wizards and their chipper, lime green clad counterparts- the healers. In the very center stood a welcome desk, manned by a pleasant grey-haired witch. "'Ello lovelies. How can I help yeh?"

"James Potter's room, please," Lily answered quietly struggling to force the corners of her lips upward. She appreciated her cheer, but at the moment, it felt out of place.

The woman frowned slightly upon hearing the name, but she quickly covered it up with a warm smile. "He's going to be just fine, dearie. Fourth floor."

Lily nodded wordlessly, feeling less than assured by the woman's sentiments, and Sirius managed to give her a tired grin. "Thanks, Aggie."

"You know her?" Lily asked as they left the desk, trying to achieve any level of conversation, even forced, to take her mind off the visions of her husband lying motionless only feet above her head.

Sirius nodded, his grin fading. "Yeah... James isn't the first of us to end up in here."

"Ah." End forced conversation. That plan hadn't worked.

Lily and Sirius hurried to the elevator and joined three healers and a struggling man whose pants seemed bound and determined to drag him in the direction opposite of that he wished to go. They stopped on every floor, allowing two new healers to step in and one of the earlier ones to step off on the third floor. Finally, on the fourth, the two remaining healers helped drag the pant-battling man down the ward, and the two former classmates followed a reasonable distance behind.

Guessing which ward James was in took no time. A small group of Order members, assumingly those who had gone to retrieve him, were situated loudly outside the room.

"Of course!" exclaimed the loudest of the group, a young woman by the name of Lyra. Lily and Lyra had been especially close at Hogwarts, and upon her marriage to Remus, she had begun playing a larger role in all their lives. "He couldn't be quiet in school and always got caught; he couldn't behave on the Quidditch pitch and he always got bludgeoned. What did you expect when you sent him out to the field?"

Sirius chuckled lightly, but Lily couldn't convince her mouth to smile. She knew Lyra was joking, trying to lighten the mood in her own way, but nothing about this was funny to Lily.

"Can I see him?"

A spent-looking, sandy haired man stood up and gave her a brief hug. "We all waited for you before we went in."

"Thank you, Remus," she replied gratefully, forcing her lips into a tight smile. "Shall we, then?"

Her companions nodded, and Lily nervously led the small parade into the room. The ward was all but empty, the only bed in use occupied by a scruffy black headed man with cracked glasses and a lanky build. Her husband looked exhausted, and though she could not see any afflictions, Lily could tell something had diminished James' strength. He looked nothing like himself.

At their presence, his hazel eyes opened, and he offered a weary smile. "Hey guys."

"Hey, sweetheart," Lily said quietly, quickly taking her husband's hand in her own.

Sirius, seeing that James was in some respect awake, wasted no time in his shouted introduction of, "Hullo Prongs!"

Her black-haired boy's smile broadened and was replaced by a tired grin. "Just because I'm in a hospital, it doesn't mean I've gone deaf, you idiot."

"You've always been deaf," Lyra inserted helpfully, raising her voice to match Sirius'. "Otherwise you'd have heard all the complaints I had about your pantsy chasing."

James snorted quietly, a little color returning to his cheeks. "Maybe if you'd been able to hit a bludger, I'd have been able to score instead of dodging the bloody things."

Lily fidgeted as she listened to the lively banter. Hospitals were generally known as places for silence and resting, but the people around her acted as though they were in the old common room, bellowing and carrying on like one of them wasn't lying in a hospital bed. Silently, she observed her husband, and with each new insult, a little life returned to his eyes. His friends' presence, however obnoxious, made him more himself; they were his medicine in ways rest could never be. And to Lily, that was enough to make it all ok.

Turning back to the conversation, she found things growing more bizarre by the second.

"It's none of your business what Remus and I do when we're alone!" Lyra snapped, laughing at her husband's increasingly red face. "I'm sure you and Lily don't want your private lives paraded around for all to see."

"Of course not," James smirked. "I don't kiss and tell. But you two- I have suspicions that the two newlyweds here are doing a lot more than kissing."

Sirius snorted, and Lyra seemed to have finally had enough. Clearing her throat, she posed the question everyone had been casually avoiding. "So are you going to tell us what landed you here, or are we going to have to inflict more damage to get it out of you?"

The room fell eerily silent, and James wilted slightly, a sad look on his face. "I don't entirely know… I mean, I remember bits and pieces, but that's really it. I was laying low; we were out in the woods. Being the night before the full moon, I can only guess which Death Eaters it was. Sorry, Moony. But they came up behind me, and that was that. I don't know what they cast or how long I was there. I remember them snapping my wand, and I remember pain. Next thing I knew, I was waking up here. I'm going to be ok, though. The healers said I should be good to go in a few days."

"Good," Lyra said with a grin, giving what Lily guessed was her best attempt at lightening the mood. "Maybe we can get you back on a broom here soon, too. I miss kicking your bum out on the pitch."

Remus shot his wife a mock glare, and Lily watched him pull her hand gently into his. With the other hand, he fished around in the pocket of his raggedy jacket and pulled out a chocolate frog. "Until then, I thought this might help. Chocolate's usually good to cure a few ailments."

Sirius opened his mouth to say something- probably sarcastic- but Lily cut him off, her nervous energy suddenly overflowing as she realized chocolate would not cure this one. Nothing would. "We need to quit the Order."

If the earlier silence had been edgy, then this one had already leapt off the edge and was plummeting quickly for a rocky gorge. Lily blushed.

"Well, I think it's time we be excused," Sirius said with a forced airiness. "I'm sure there are plenty of Healers for me to chase, and these two can do whatever it is they do in private."

James nodded, and the three aforementioned Marauders filed out the door. As soon as they were gone, he pulled her closer to him. "Lily? Lils. What's going on?"

"I- We need to quit the Order."

With a sigh, James drew her closer still, wincing as he shifted in his bed to make room for her. "I heard you. But what's going on?"

Lily sat gently next to him on the bed, and she clung tighter to his hand, tracing every contour of his palm. She imagined the fabled lifeline their Divination teacher had always talked about, and the red-head was sure she could feel it shortening with every second they continued fighting in this bloody war.

"I can't lose you, James. We cut it too close this time."

James scooted further, and he pulled her feet onto his bed so that she was lying next to him. "You're still not answering the question, love. We both knew this could happen. We new we might die. But we agreed, and we always have, that this is something worth dying for. What's changed?"

"I don't think I can do this alone, James. Maybe I'm just not as strong as I used to be. Maybe I'm going soft." She trembled slightly. Everything was becoming too much; Lily longed for their simple school days, filled with drama and diversions rather than darkness and danger. At this point, no cost seemed too high to return to those days, as long as they could all be together.

James' arm wrapped around her waist, and she felt his lips press against her forehead. "You've always been soft. But that's not what this is. What can't you do alone?"

She froze. Lily hadn't told him yet. In the chaos and confusion of the day, she'd put it in the back of her mind. Now was the time. "I can't raise our baby on my own, James. I won't."

"Our… Baby? You mean you're- There's a- _Our _baby?" A mix of confusion, shock, and unmistakable joy crossed his face, and Lily couldn't help but smile.

"Our baby. I'm pregnant, and I don't want this little one to miss out on seeing his or her daddy when it's growing up. And_ I _don't want to miss out on seeing his daddy while he's growing up either." Forgetting where they were or why they were there, Lily snuggled into her husband's chest. He winced at first, but when she tried to pull away, James held her in place.

"Our baby," he whispered again, putting a hand on her abdomen. "There's a- There's a little thing in there?"

With a quiet chuckle, Lily placed her hand on top of his. "Yes, there's a little thing growing in there. But _please,_ when he or she's a little bigger, refrain from calling her a thing. I don't think the baby will like that, and I know I won't."

"Fine, not a thing," he conceded, looking happier than he had in ages. "But what are we going to do? We need names. And a plan. And little Quidditch robes. And a broom. And-"

She couldn't help but laugh. "James, right now the baby's only this big." She held up her fingers. "I think the broom can wait. But we do need a plan. How are we going to do this and still help the Order?"

"I'll talk to Dumbledore," he answered immediately. "I'm not leaving the Order, but I'll find local things to do… I might try to get a desk job in the Ministry, working with the theory of what the Death Eaters are doing. You can stay where you're at. And we'll do this together. I'll make it work."

His arms felt warm around her, and she suddenly felt safer than before and surrounded by sparks. Lily was laying in the arms of the only man she'd ever loved; they were married with a baby on the way; and they, alongside all their friends, were fighting to keep the light alive. James was going to be ok. Everything was finally falling into place.

"Promise you won't leave me?" she asked. "I meant what I said. I _cannot_ do this alone, and I won't do it without you. If we die, we die together."

James nodded. "Always together," he agreed. "Mrs. Lily Jane Potter, I promise you. You will never be alone."


End file.
